Debut: 'Work It Out' is a Profound Gem

In a quiet kitchen, a woman spoons ceviche into a stone dish. On a deserted Los Angeles street, a young man is served the ceviche, seated alone at a card table as the bass from the restaurant’s music thumps in the background. He bites into a tortilla chip, puts down a half-finished book, and pulls out his phone. 

“¿Eyy, que onda?” he asks, and a young woman responds. “Just looking for work.”

He makes small talk and shifts in his seat. “I feel like I owe you an apology,” he says, moving away from the music. 

“Wow,” says the woman on the other end of the line. “Can you repeat that?”

In Work It Out, Mexico-City based filmmaker Jazmin Garcia uses “memories conjured by the food on our plate” and the act of having a meal alone but in public, to explore her protagonist’s repressed feelings. The protagonist is a clean-cut man in his twenties whose body language is measured and stoic. His solitary dinner gives way to inner reflection, and he reaches out to his sister, with whom he hasn’t spoken in months.

As they get deeper into their conversation, the viewer pieces together a tale of loss and a strained relationship. The protagonist is clearly uncomfortable with his vulnerability – reflection over his lonesome meal seems to have unmoored something within him. As he paces the dimly-lit street, talking to his sister, we learn that the pair recently lost their father. The sibling’s guards are slowly let down, and the small talk gets less and less funny.

“I realize how unfair I’ve been with you,” the man says, his face illuminated by a neon CEVICHE sign in the restaurant window. 

“The last time you called all sentimental-like, you were tripping balls,” his sister says skeptically.

The camera shifts to an untouched bowl in the foreground, with the man several feet away. 

“Just listen,” he urges. “There was this dream I had the other night…”

The camera pans to a darkened sky, and the protagonist’s voice begins to echo dreamily. 

“There were all these dancers,” he says.

The camera spins wildly as dancers in sunglasses groove to a funky beat, illuminated by flashing strobes in what looks like a school gym. 

“And then all the dancers kind of became the same person? And this guy, holding the world in his arms…”

He describes the Virgin Mary and a man dancing with a baby in his arms. 

“Kind of like that picture of dad,” he says. The music deafens, and both sides of the call – the protagonist and his sister fade into the same dreamy frame. A heartbeat grows louder. The siblings share memories of their father as religious imagery fades in and out of the frame. The viewer feels almost as if they, too, are “tripping balls,” just as the sister asked earlier. Shot on a Super 8 film camera, Work It Out feels both vintage and timeless, and though the characters talk on 2020s smartphones, their conversation and the man’s imaginative dream seem suspended in time.

The dream scene stops, and the man is back outside of the cevichería. 

“It was a dream about what it means to be a good man,” he says. “Somebody who knows how to love deeply.”

“Do you think you’ve been a good man?” his sister asks. The viewer sees the man’s face close-up, green from the neon signs, with textured skin and imperfections. 

“Not really, foo, no. But I do wanna be.”

He says goodbye to his sister, and the dancing music fades in again. The cooks chop cilantro, and the man sits back down to his ceviche. 

The credits roll as he enjoys his food in silence, alone. Garcia writes of Work It Out,

“When solitary moments savoured facilitate access to our own thoughts, without distractions, the reasoning and realizations that follow can serve as a form of awakening.”

The protagonist finds catharsis in accessing his own emotions and in expressing empathy for his sister. When he returns to his food, he seems renewed, eating quickly and with gusto. A weight has been lifted from his chest, and all because he reached out upon reflection. 

Work It Out is an aesthetically beautiful film, both timely and timeless. It expresses an intimacy both between family and within oneself. The viewer is engaged in the story and encouraged to reflect on their own relationships, trauma, emotions, and connections, both inside themselves and with their loved ones. By the time the protagonist sits back down at his table, viewers have been taken on a journey through a tiny facet of his life that leaves us understanding him and ourselves, more deeply.